Creating Play Places

We are fortunate enough to have the room in our house to have designated spaces for the girls' toys and play items. We have a "playroom" in our loft upstairs. I have transformed our entire upstairs, the loft, hallways, and walls into different play areas for both girls. 

I have found that Mckenna plays really well when her toys are organized and "staged" 

It sounds kind of silly to say that I "stage" her toys, but what I mean by that is that I have created various little play areas for her within the playroom. Creating play areas seem to help her focus her play, cuts down on the cries of "where is this piece/toy", and gives the playroom a bit more structure. 

So today's post is all about our play areas....

The most popular play spot is the dress-up area. We have TONS of dress-up clothes, however I only have 4-5 dresses out at a time. 

1. That is all that fit on the pegs. 

2. She seems to wear the same one over and over again. 

3. They all end up on the floor if they are all out. 

She is welcome to any of them at any time, but just has to ask for me to get out the others. 

I store them in the guest room closet.

In order to create this area I  bought and painted a wood peg hook rack at Michaels and painted it and glammed it up with princess decor. I screwed it into the wall. I added the Princess vinyl, a floor length mirror, and Voila... dress up area. The mirror is "glammed" up with scrapbooking stickers. The white bin is home to crowns, glass slippers and wands. We have TONS of dress-up accessories. The rest are in a basket in Mckenna's room. (Norah likes to dump them and I don't like to pick them up.)

Next to the dress up area is the Princess Castle tent (Where Norah likes to hide.)

Every princess needs a castle to play in. 

Moving along to the next play area... the kitchen/house area.

I love our play kitchen. I did WAY too much research before buying it. But it was worth it. 

The far little right piece of black counter is a seating area. It has a little stool that goes there. 

(The stool is probably in Mckenna's room, so she can climb to reach something.)

The green bins house all of our play food, dishes, pots and pans and tea party accessories. 

The bins have labels on them, but I need some new labels. They are hard to read and now to Mckenna is able to read some basic site words, they need to be clearer to read. We will be working on those site words then! Ha! 

 Norah loves playing with the kitchen! She likes to open and close the doors, walking along it and putting toys inside. It's cute because they "cook" together!

(We have a little grill set that is currently in a different play area. Sometimes I add it to this area so that they have a seating area too. Right now with the baby toys it just makes it too crowded.)

I created this "doll house" area after Christmas when Mckenna got this Cinderella Castle. She LOVES to play with it. She loves little figurines and has a whole cast of characters in the castle at all times. (I laugh when I see Captain Hook, Ursala, and Raja (from Aladdin) all hanging out together in Cinderella's Castle.)

She also loves the Melissa and Doug Wooden Castle that is on the floor on the right side. She mixes and matches the characters between the different houses.

Norah is starting to take an interest in Little People. She plays with the farm, the little house and castle. She likes to copy Big Sis!

The blue and pink bins house storage for our Little People, Princess Barbies, Mr. Potato Head and friends.... and our collection of Me Readers.

Next is the baby doll area. This is one of two doll areas in our house. The other is in Mckenna's Room. Here we have a little nook with the doll beds, high chair and the strollers. Most of these pieces get moved out and around when the girls are playing with them. Food from the kitchen also gets brought over for the babies to eat. 

I try to keep a basket or bucket of all the doll accessories (bottles, bibs, etc) on the TV stand back behind the high chair. It's usually dumped out and on the floor!

A few months back I hung this shelf to house stuffed animals. It is a wood crate from Michaels that I spray painted blue. The stuffed animals don't seem to get played with a lot, however they do get thrown around everywhere. Makes. Me. Crazy!

Right now this collection of baby toys and books is right in front of the TV. These get moved around a lot between my room, Norah's room and the playroom. We have more, but these are her favorites right now. Do you have the ball popper?? It is LOUD!

View of the room looking from the top of the stairs.

View from outside the Master Bedroom

TV area

This is the opposite side of the upstairs. The door on the left is the kids bathroom and the one on the right is the guest room. The tree is made of felt and has apples for apple picking. The hopscotch rug comes and goes. Sometimes Mckenna is into it and sometimes I am tired of flattening it out!

View across from by the apple tree

The middle door is our Master Bedroom. The door on the right is Norah's room.

Just last week I wrote about transforming my front hall closet into a toy storage closet for the downstairs. While our upstairs playroom has the "play areas" I keep some toys downstairs. The downstairs activities are art related, puzzles, board games, and some play food activities.

This is our little art station/play table where we do our downstairs activities. 

Most of them involve/need a table.

Thank you for visiting and reading about the different play places we have in our house.

I have written several other posts that involve play activities for our house. 

Please click on the links below to be directed to them!!


Mckenna's Market - Our play store/market!
Painted Pizza Pans - Magnetic Art Boards
Doc Mckenna - Our Vet Clinic
Closet Toy Storage
Playroom Post 1 - The Beginning
Playroom Updates
Art Supply Storage
For the Kids - Posts I have written that are fun things/about kids



Linking Up
 I Heart Naptime
Skip to My Lou
Sugar Aunts 
Flamingo Toes 
No Time for Flash Cards
Real Coake
The 36th Avenue

Basketball and Artists

Today Jim played in a Staff vs. Students basketball game at his school. They have a March Madness tournament every year... the band plays, the cheerleaders dance and perform. We headed up to watch him this afternoon. 

Norah practiced her new little trick of slurping down her applesauce! 

She loves it and is such a big girl doing it!

As I've said, Mckenna has really picked back up on art and drawing this week. She has a little notebook she has been "creating" in. Today she sat in the stands and drew... yep just like this!

Then she decided to draw Uncle Bill.... she would look up at him and then back down to her paper like she was a little artist!

Getting a little help on the ears!

It's hard to believe she is only 3 some days!

Wednesday

Yesterday morning Mckenna and I were hanging out in the Den while Norah napped. I had some things to take care of on the computer and needed my label maker, the printer, etc.

Mckenna found her face paint by the art supplies and asked me to paint a rainbow on her cheek. 

No sweat! 

Then she wanted a butterfly on the other cheek. 

No problem!

After the first two designs, she asked if she could do some by herself. I let her go to it... why not??

Yep! There she is!

She told me she was Spider Man?!

And then she had Spider Man moves!! Ha!

She wore the face paint all day. Even to the park. When I tried to wash it off before the park she told me, "Mom I have to go to the park as Spider Man. What if I need to rescue someone? I have to be Spider Man!"

Thankfully she was all cleaned up for ballet!

See those rosy cheeks?? That is her face stained from the paint!

Sweet sister!!!

My little darlings!!!

All by Myself

"I can do it ALL. BY. MY. SELF"

Yes, I hear this quite often these days. And sadly, yes she can often do it all by herself. 

This includes putting on her own socks, jacket and putting on a band-aid. 

It also now includes writing her name!! 

Those tricky "K's" were getting us for awhile!

Then today she was in the other room and brought me this beautiful picture where she wrote MOMMY for me!!! We didn't even help her spell it! She came up with (remembered) all by herself! Why am I not surprised? The kid remembers everything!

Love you my sweet big girl!!

Arts and Crafts

One thing that Mckenna LOVES is doing art projects... or making crafts. She has gotten increasing interested in crafting lately. She will ask if we can make a craft first thing in the morning... Mommy loves to craft, just not at 6:30am! She especially likes crafts that involve cutting and gluing. Sometimes I will even let her "make a craft" while I cook dinner... aka let her cut up random newspapers or junk mail!

I have been trying to plan several crafts per week for us to make (thank you Pinterest). 

In the last few days we have made multiple crafts... yesterday we may have set a record with the amount of time we spent with scissors, glue, glitter, paint and markers.

On Wednesday we made paper plate tambourines... 

Shake shake shake

They were a big hit... cost no money and will be a source of fun (until I throw them away!)

Mckenna colored some paper plates while I made dinner. We added some dry rice and glued them shut. The next morning they were ready to go! Shake it up!

Our pantry door has become "The Gallery"
Mckenna asks for tape to hang up her masterpieces...
You can see the hand print butterfly we made yesterday, along with her first two pieces of art from preschool!

Yes, fun finger painting and our hand prints for the rainbow at school. 

We have begun to accumulate  TONS of art supplies, as a result of all of our crafting love!
I have a couple of different ways to store it all.

First, this is stuff we use all the time. The white/clear drawers store construction paper and coloring books, along with puzzles and playdoh.

Here is our little art table

Art supplies, along with our oatmeal sensory box and other flash cards and memory games we have made. 

Crayons, markers and colored pencils are stored in buckets in the pantry... out of the reach of little fingers! I do often leave the crayon bucket out for her on the art table... she has been getting a little too daring though lately, so I'm not sure if it will be staying out anymore. 

This is my art closet in the den. It houses my craft supplies, pictures, party supplies and other random crafty, girly things. This is where I keep extra construction paper, "specialty" coloring/painting books, or other random stuff I don't want her using on her own. 

This is the the back of our den door which is right next to the craft closet above. Again, this has stuff I either don't want her having her hands on (paint) or extras of supplies (crayons, markers). 

We love art projects!!! Can't wait to share more!

Shaving Cream Fun

We have been experimenting with some new indoor activities to play with during the day... one day last week we had some fun with shaving cream!!

She was a little unsure to start...

But she got over it pretty quickly!!

Dying Easter Eggs

Saturday afternoon we finally had some time to dye Easter Eggs!
We had dyed eggs last year with Alex and Emma, but obviously Mckenna doesn't remember that.

She apparently liked the cold eggs!

Watching the tablets dissolve in the stinky vinegar...

Watching the eggs sit.... cheesing it up!

Of course she needed to try to get the eggs out of the cups herself

Drying the eggs off so she could put stickers on them
Sticker time!! This was what she liked the most... shocking!
Some of our finished products....
So cute!

Look at all those pretty eggs!

Have I told you we LOVE things that match!! She is able to find similarities in objects/people/toys (anything) and let me know what the match is. She gets really creative with her matches.... her book is a match to her necklace because they both of Ariel on them! :)

Overall our egg dying experience went great! She had fun... we only lost 1 egg... it only took 30 minutes and there were stickers involved! And at the end of the day, all we need are stickers!